The Politics of Occupational Welfare

In the last decades, many European countries have seen retrenchment in public social policies due to fiscal restrictions and demographic changes, whilst benefits financed by employers have been expanding. Even in policy fields without cutbacks, firms have been providing more and more occupational benefits on a voluntary basis. Although the research literature improved our understanding of retrenchment processes from a public policy and state-oriented perspective, much less is known about the conditions and contributions of non-state social policies (occupational welfare) and non-state actors (social partners). Depending on the sector of employment, the increase of occupational welfare may cement inequalities since occupational benefits are linked to employment careers and salary. Therefore, my central research question is: What shapes the growth and institutional design of occupational welfare, and what is the connection between occupational welfare and dualisation tendencies? For a comprehensive understanding of the public-private mix, this project combines country-analyses with sector- analyses in two social policy fields. From a theoretical point of view, this project considers institutionalist and actor-centred conditions while searching for explanations for the development and form of occupational welfare with an emphasis on the role of social partners. The arguments of comparative approaches used for this project were very good at explaining the commonalities and differences among countries in terms of public social policies. For the purpose of this project, their insights are transferred and developed further to occupational welfare and sectoral differences. Regarding the policy fields, I contrast pensions as a rather "old" policy field where occupational pensions have a substituting character with family as a "younger" policy field and more supplementary benefits and services at occupational level. The emphasis of the project lies on collective and sectoral forms of occupational welfare in order to make the findings as comparable as possible. The comparison of four countries which belong to different regimes (Austria, Denmark, Great Britain and Italy) provides variation in order to systematically study the effects of different conditions. For the selection of sectors, I refer to employees` skills (high-general, low-general, specific) and form of social partnerships (strong and weak). Three steps structure the research design: First, I analyse the public-private mix across countries (country-case studies); second, I focus on occupational welfare within countries (cross-sectoral analysis within countries); and the third step deals with occupational welfare at sector-level across countries (sector-case studies across countries). Empirically, I will apply qualitative methods such as documentary analyses and secondary data analyses together with expert interviews. The policy-relevant goal of this project is to provide policy actors with essential information about the scope and forms of occupational welfare, giving suggestions on best-practices from the country- and sector-studies in order to avoid greater future inequalities.

The project analysed for Austria, Denmark, Italy, and the UK as well as for different industries, what factors shape the level and design of occupational welfare in order to a) get a comprehensive understanding of the interplay of public and company-level policy, and b) to shed light on possible inequalities for employees. The results show that the scope for occupational pensions across countries largely depends on the level of public pension benefits. In contrast, public family policy is of minor importance for the level of occupational family policy. What matters more is the country-specific environment such as normative beliefs about who should take a paid job and who should care for the family. In addition to public family policy, companies contribute to a great extent to the reconciliation of work and family life. Individual actors have a varying impact on the design of occupational welfare, depending on the country and industry. Employee representatives have a positive effect on family-friendly working time arrangements in companies with many female employees such as in banks and insurances as well as in the public administration. However, they have a negative effect in male-dominated industries (e.g. production) and in countries where traditional family models are prevailing (such as Austria). Occupational family policy largely depends on the employer in the UK, where employee representatives have only limited rights. Although national pension systems differ across countries, the project found significant similarities within economic sectors across countries. Coverage rates and employer contributions are high in industries with high-skilled employees (finance and insurance) or with strong unions who act on behalf of economically weak employees (e.g. construction industry in Germany and Denmark). Therefore, strong trade unions and encompassing collective agreements can prevent inequalities regarding occupational pensions. In general, the results indicate that for the analysis and assessment of social policy it is important to focus not only on public programmes, but also on company-level activities as the latter are essential for employees welfare in many countries.